If Crows Know Best (Mage of Merced Book 1) (21 page)

“If you become as skilled as Annora, will your brother take you along? And give over his foolishness about taking her with him?”

“It’s she who wants to go, he doesn’t want to take her. That’s why I’m to learn animal lore.”

He grunted and resumed with his rag. “I had a war horse, laid his ears back to everybody. I called him Snake, because that’s how he would lash out and bite anyone in reach. I wonder if you or Annora could have made him happy to do your bidding.” He laughed without humor. “I have to think not, and he wouldn’t have been much good in battle if made tame, anyway.”

“What happened to him?”

“Don’t know. I lost him when I lost my rank. He’s someone else’s problem now. Or fed to the dogs.”

###

Afternoon lengthened into evening. Gevarr and I turned to loading the wagon with sacks of grain for the team. His strength was coming back, if not his grip, and I passed him the burlap bags as he stood behind the wagon’s seat. He stowed them below the bench. I had just handed up the last one when we heard a sudden cry from the east field. Wieser didn’t look up, but Gevarr and I froze. It came again, Annora’s voice, but crying out in laughter, not fear. She appeared on the path to the back gate, skirts pulled up in her fists, running fast. Wils came pelting after, and caught her up at the gate, with an arm slung around her waist. She gave a little shriek, but turned in his arms to twine her own arms about his neck and kiss him. He swept her up after a moment, pushed through the gate and carried her up the stairs into the house, still kissing her.

Gevarr stood stock-still, watching. Muscles bunched in his jaw, but he did not look away or put down his burden. I did not like to guess what he was thinking.

“He’s her husband,” I said at last.

“I’m clear who he is.” He turned his back to me to shove the sack under the seat. It is a wonder the bag didn’t burst.

I called Wieser and walked to the garden, trying to sort out whether I should get skilled enough to leave Annora home. It could be better for her to come with Wils, than stay home with Gevarr. Or, maybe I would suggest to Wils that Gevarr be shifted to the caves to live with whichever of the men stayed up there while we were gone.

I told Wieser, “It’s wearing on me to be in charge of everybody. Da coming home can’t happen too soon for me!” She licked her muzzle and wagged her tail.

###

Next morning, I walked into the barn to find Wils and Gevarr having a blazing row in Honey’s stall. Both had their fists balled up at their sides, but with several feet still between them, I did not think they had come to blows. Yet. That looked to be coming next.

“If she was my wife—” Gevarr ground out, voice getting louder word by word.

“As she’s
my
wife, I’ll be the one to say where she goes,” Wils growled, feral and fierce.

“What do you know about war!” Gevarr shouted. “You have no idea what you’d be carrying her into. Have you ever seen a woman used by troops in blood-lust? Used to the death? I have.” Here he flung out a hand toward me. “Even your boy brother had sense enough to keep her as far away from soldiers as he could!”

“Leave me out of it,” I said.

“Sure, he kept her away from soldiers until he took one into our house. I’m still trying to figure why!” Wils glared in my direction, but kept facing Gevarr, every muscle taut.

“I’m a trained warrior and you are not. You cannot think to keep her safe. Have sense,” Gevarr growled in his turn. Abruptly he ran a hand through his hair, and shook out his arms. “Just let me keep her here with Morie and Virda. Leave me one man, and I guarantee I—we will keep all harm from them until you return. We’ll even go up to the caves now to make sure. Be a man. Don’t put her at this kind of risk because you’re afraid you can’t keep her heart.”

Gevarr would likely have been successful but for his last remark. Wils had begun to listen up until then, I could see. As soon as Gevarr suggested Wils could lose Annora, Wils’s face shut like an iron gate.

“You’ll hear my final decision when I am ready. And live with it,” Wils said, and strode out.

“Stripling fool,” Gevarr muttered to his departing back. “Can’t you make him see reason?” he said, swinging around toward me.

“I said, leave me out of it. You know he can see how you feel about her, why would he want to leave her in your care?”

“Because I can take care of her, and he can’t. I would not … trespass, even if the lady would allow.” He gazed off toward the house.

“Maybe you’d better tell him that, then. Your tongue does not serve you overwell.”

“I’m a soldier, not a noble,” he grumbled.

“If a noble is someone who can keep their feet out of their mouth, then you’re right. That’s not you.” I stomped off to get Dink ready for a trip to the cave, which is what I’d been going to do before I got involved in their own private war.

###

I did not need any uncanny sight to see Wils agonizing over whether to bring Annora or no. Growing more desperate to show proficient in the animal lore, I went to the village to try my horse skills with the smithy’s cob, and any other horses there getting shod. I saw no point denying, Annora had the greater skill with horses unknown to her. I did well enough with those familiar ones at home which knew me. I was not so reliable with any others.

Annora helped her cause by not pleading, pouting or crying. She only said she would not want to be parted from Wils again, having endured it once. Then she held her head high and went pleasantly about her work.

While I stretched the too-snug harness and added extra leather, I overheard Wils tell Perk, “It would be easy to bid her to stay if she carried on about going. She acts a better soldier here at home than many we passed on the road. Merchants and farmers whining about sore feet and empty bellies.”

Perk agreed with him, but added, “She hardly looks a Traveller, though, with all that fair hair. You and I and Judian can pass, but not her.”

“A woman’s hair can be hidden, under cloak or shawl. That’s not what worries me …” and they walked off together, still murmuring.

Virda heard them talking, too, and looked over at me as I watched them pace away. “Don’t take it so, Judian. Wils will make a wise choice. Your gift with magic and animals he may not have, but he has a gift of his own. He’s like your da. People come to him, and follow him, look to him for what to do. Why do you think these men came from the fort with Wils, when they had only known him a short time, and knew nothing of where he was from?”

“Because he asked them to be couriers,” I said, but I hadn’t really thought about it before. They were just Wils’s men.

“Because of his way with people. Your da has it, too.”

I thought about it for a bit, then said, “He doesn’t seem to have much of a way with Gevarr.”

“He keeps Gevarr subdued enough, considering how taken the man is with Annora. Did you think I was too old to notice?” she teased, when I feigned shock at her remark.

“Never,” I said, though Morie once wondered aloud why Da and Virda did not marry, since they were both old. “Because Virda has sons as old as Da,” I had told Morie, who was puzzled why that was a hindrance.

As soon as we received word from our watchers in Bale Harbour, describing the off-load of a heavy cargo of oats destined for Keltane, Wils declared his roster. Virda would take over the messenger birds, flying between the farm and the harbour and us on the road. Morie of course would stay with her. Cobbel and Gevarr would remain and do the farm work, and take everyone to the stocked caves if danger threatened.

Annora and I would drive the wagon, with Wils, Perk, Miskin, Beckta and Joren Delyth within, armed with the weapons from the cache Gevarr had shown Wils in the winter. Wieser and my crows would accompany us as sentries, and to fly to and fro with messages as we ran ahead of the oat wagon to stage our ambush.

Wils’s look as he laid it out dared Gevarr to comment, but the man kept silent, if pointedly so.

We carried out final preparations for early morning departure.

CHAPTER 32

“Why oats?” Joren Delyth asked me as we loaded our remaining gear, plus all the arrows from the arms cache.

“Because oats can be cooked with just water, which they have aplenty in the underground cisterns, or ground into flour and baked. And also fed to horses. Unless they’ve eaten all their horses and are living on rats by now.” I could not claim to be at my most polite early mornings, and never as polite as Joren.

“And are we sure the Keltanese soldier,”—for he never called him by name—“taught us the proper words to use, and not nonsense that will betray us at once?”

“Both Wils and I know enough Keltanese to be certain of that,” I said.

He still seemed wary, and I prayed he would keep silent and out of the way until we stole the cargo wagon for him to drive.

Wils took charge of the maps, and had relieved me of Da’s sword. I still had my knife, and I saw Annora still had Gevarr’s knife at her waist. She wore a skirt, but had shown me a pair of Wils’s trousers she packed in the event she needed to conceal her gender. She confided that Gevarr had shown her some tricks of hand-to-hand combat, going for the eyes or windpipe, using an attacker’s motion and weight against him.

“Do you mean he put his hands on you?” I paused, holding a frying pan as I looked for space in the cook box.

“How else would he show me what to do?” She creased her brows at me.

“I wouldn’t mention it to Wils. Gevarr’s opinion about you coming along is a sore place between them.” I jammed the pan in the box sideways, and decided to say no more.

Tock took wing to Guthy’s to carry a message that we were setting out. Gargle and Clock took it in turns to ride on the peak of our wagon hut or circle above, scouting the road.

We made good time through the village, waving to Bar and Nellen Estegg as we passed. Gefretta ran alongside to hand up a loaf, “for Beckta and Miskin” she panted, then stood in the road waving. I handed her loaf into the back, warning, “Don’t let it drop on your foot,” as it was a brick. If she thought to impress the men with her baking skill, she would have to try again.

I had been wondering if we would be able to spot the battlefield where our troops fought the invaders near the village. We found it not far west along the road. Though our fallen had been buried long since, the expanse of grass was marked with rock cairns, perhaps a hundred of them, one cairn standing over each grave. At the far end of the field, a bonfire had been made of other bodies, those of the enemy, I guessed. Flame-blackened bones stuck out of the ash. I felt a moment’s gladness that Gevarr’s were not among the bones there.

I spoke to the others in back. I knew they would want to see. Everyone looked out, and we passed by in silence. Just at the edge, Annora called out, “Wait!” and hopped off to stand in the grass. She raised a packet from her herb bag, and let the golden contents drift away in the breeze, carried over the cairns. “For their peace,” she said when she grasped my hand to climb back into the wagon. I clucked to the team and we rolled on.

From time to time, Wils stuck his head out to survey the road ahead. “This will be a bit too much like our trip home, I think, though I must say I prefer riding to walking. We will have to camp off the main road, since we can’t all sleep in the back.” Indeed, the interior was stuffed as tight as an egg in its shell. “I have some places in mind.”

“Will we stay in any of the inns?” I asked.

“No, that’s where the drivers and guards will be staying. Or, in stretches without inns, they camp in groups. We saw some of them when we made our way back home. We will need to make ourselves scarce until we come to the right place to strike.”

We swayed and bumped our way along all the day, passing some wagons and being overtaken by others, meeting a goodly number headed east as well. We didn’t see any other Traveller rigs. We ate Gefretta’s bread while we rolled, and only Annora and Joren did not complain it was tough.

Wils peered ahead, shading his eyes from the lowering sun, until he consulted his map a last time and said we would turn off the main way and continue a couple of miles south to camp by the Cisca River. All the country to the west we had covered was new to me, though it didn’t look too different from home yet. Annora also said she had not been this far west before, and Wils allowed he didn’t think the countryside had much to recommend it. He was still wondering if he had made the right choice in bringing her, I reckoned.

Wieser had lain in the back with the men when she wasn’t sitting between Annora and me. She looked to be as glad as any of us to climb down and walk out the cramps in her legs. She and I took charge of the horses’ feed and water, and I groomed them while they tugged at haynets. Wils rigged a line between two trees to tie them for the night.

We made what Perk said was a fine form of a Traveller encampment, since he had seen some in his journeys. Annora cooked over the fire. Supper was settling fine when Wieser barked gruffly once, and then walked stiff-legged down the track we had followed. I could just hear wagon wheels rumbling and hoof beats. Next a faint chingle of harness drifted on the breeze.

“Company,” I said. Annora covered her hair, Wils gestured to her to step up into the wagon with the other men, and I sat by the fire. He joined me there, saying, “I thought we were far enough off the main way to be alone.”

“Maybe just a farmer on his way home from market,” I said. I prayed so.

A laden hay wagon with lanterns hung on either side trundled into view, the horse plodding with fatigue. A lone man drove, face obscured by shadow under a broad-brimmed hat. He raised a hand to us and reined his horse to a stop.

“Hallo,” he called. “Are you bound for Everton Lake? There’s work to be had in the fields there. So few of our men folk have come home from the war as yet.”

“Our way lies farther west, but we’ll tell others we meet,” Wils said. “I thank you for the news.”

“Don’t know what we’ll eat this winter if we can’t get crops in,” grumbled the driver. “The Keltanese have turned our lives arse uppermost.”

That made me laugh, and Wils poked me in the ribs to shush me. “Yah,” he agreed. “They have done well at that, it’s true.”

“Send any and all our way!” the man said, and clucked to his horse. It shook its ears and strained against the collar to get the wagon rolling again, and they creaked on into the night, trailing the sweet smell of hay. When we could no longer make out the swinging lanterns, Wils let the others come down by the fire.

“Is it the same story through the whole of Merced, do you think?” Perk asked Wils. “Taking the harbour may have been their first goal, but if they’ve dissolved the government and council, that means the enemy is far and away south in the capital, too. There must still be an entire army occupying not just our province, but all others, as well.”

“It will be years before we know the sum of what has taken place, I fear.” Wils rubbed a hand over his eyes. “I aspire no higher than getting my da safely home, then routing the Keltanes from our home province. I’m not ready to take on clearing the whole country of them. Perk, you have first watch. I hope I haven’t picked us a spot at an all-night crossroads.” He looked at Wieser, then up at the crows perched above the wagon’s door, but they gave no warning of further passersby.

Wieser and I took our bedroll to a flat spot under the wagon, and it wasn’t long before she fell to snoring. I followed her into dreams soon after.

###

We built a rhythm of daily travel and camping, keeping ahead of the cargo wagon we planned to waylay. Wils told us to expect to travel for three weeks to come to the valley below the fort. He had marked a desolate, hilly stretch of road as the best place to hijack the wagon. We could then drive it into the valley where the tunnel entrance led into the fort high above the valley floor.

“We better unload and then send the wagon on beyond the entrance,” I said one day as we drove. Wils sat beside me, maps on his knees. “Otherwise we’ll have led any pursuers to our way in.”

“You’re not wrong there,” he admitted. “I thought to get the sacks into the tunnel as quick as we can, then run the wagon on down here, see?” He pointed to a river that wound across the map of the valley. “We can make it appear we have sent the goods downriver by raft, if they track it there.”

“We’ll have six horses and two wagons at that juncture. Our team and the heavy wagon’s team, plus the two guards’ mounts. If Joren takes the cargo wagon to the river, and we hide ours nearer the fort, how will we get back together?”

“While you’ve been back and forth to Bale Harbour, I’ve been working all this through. My thought is to send you with Joren—”

“Think again! I’m going in to Da with you!”

“I have to stay with Annora outside, I can’t bring her into the fort or leave her unprotected in the valley. The others will go in and carry the goods up. If Da won’t come out with the men, I’ll go in to see him and find out what he wants to do next. My suspicion is he’ll want to find a way to close the pass—loose the rocks. He was preparing to see to it when the siege began.”

“Why didn’t he have you do that when you left?” I wondered.

“It’s not like tripping the string on a deadfall trap. There are boulders along both sides of the pass held back by giant timbers and networks of iron chain. You need a crew of a dozen men on each side to let it loose.” He sighed. “It has to be done, for it will take them many months to clear, and require a great many men. Plus, all their trade would have to go miles and miles out of the way to the southern trade routes.”

“They won’t be able to use the northwest pass by us for any of it?”

“Not for wagons, only pack trains. Just a trickle compared to what’s going through this pass ahead of us.” He nodded toward the western horizon.

Annora put her head out of the back, and handed us each sacks of dried fruit and nutmeats, then a jug of mead. Wils leaned round and brought her hand to his lips as he took the jug, and she smiled up at him.

“Maybe you could act that sappy when I don’t have to watch,” I suggested, but I smiled, too. Wils gave me a poke in the ankle with the toe of his boot, though I saw he was grinning when he turned to face front again.

###

In due time, and after a bout of sloppy weather that seemed endless but was actually three days all told, we came to the stretch of road where Wils planned to lay our trap. The way had started to narrow and climb, so drivers had to be attentive to what lay over the next rise or curve, being unable to see far ahead. There was room for two wagons to pass side-by-side, but only just. Drivers could only go ahead, not turn around anywhere.

We arrived a day ahead of our quarry, according to our messenger crows. Wils scouted a high place for Annora and me to be situated so we could see the approach of a dark red wagon drawn by a gray and a sorrel. Wils planned to hide our wagon off the road where the valley opened out farther ahead, and walk back with all our men to wait hidden in the trees and brush on the slope below the roadside. Gargle was to fly above and squawk when Annora and I saw the target come into view. She and I would then work our magic to stop the team and the guards’ horses, and our men would attack. Once the wagon was commandeered, and the soldiers’ uniforms taken, Joren would drive the team on, while Beckta and Miskin donned the stolen uniforms and rode alongside like guards. On past the ambush, Wils showed us where the wagon was to turn off and make for the tunnel entrance in the valley. Annora and I were to climb down and drive our wagon to the tunnel entrance following the stolen wagon. If we were lucky, we could get all accomplished before another wagon came upon our skirmish; if we were unlucky, we would have even more men, and horses, to contend with. I prayed to all the five gods, Earth, Fire, Water, Air and Ether, for good fortune in our plan and its execution.
Smile on us this day
.

Wils armed me with a crossbow, and asked me to be careful not to shoot anyone on our side. I said, “Mayhap I could chalk a big “X” on your rump, so as to remind me.” He was past joking, though.

“Are you killing the driver and guards?” Annora wanted to know.

“If I have to. If I can get them away and trussed up so they’ll raise no alarm for a while, that is another possibility.” He frowned as she turned to rummage in the cookware box. She took from it a long length of braided cord and held it out to him.